PEOPLE will only be allowed to live in a former Abertillery pub for 56 days at a time, for fear the building will become a House of Multiple Occupation (HMO) by default.
Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council planners have approved a proposal by Thomas Lewis of Highmore Investments Limited (HIL) to turn the second-floor flat of the former Penndragon pub on Oak Street in Abertillery into eight bedrooms.
This is supposed to provide “temporary accommodation” and help address the homelessness issue in the county borough.
One of the bedrooms would be used by staff to manage the site.
The application was lodged with the council in March and brings the distinctive three-storey former pub on the periphery of the town centre back into use.
HIL bought the property in 2022 with the intention of reopening the premises as a pub with eight letting rooms on the second floor, but this proposal failed.
In her report, development team manager Joanne White stressed the difference between this scheme and one for an HMO and that the council only has 21 rooms available for emergency accommodation.
Of these 21, five are actually outside Blaenau Gwent.
Ms White said this was “demonstrating a clear need to increase the provision of temporary/emergency accommodation within the borough”.
Ms White said: “The proposal meets an identified need for temporary accommodation for vulnerable people within the borough.
“The managed nature of the sui generis use, supported by appropriate conditions, ensures that any potential impacts on neighbouring amenity can be controlled to an acceptable level.
“When weighed in the planning balance, the provision of seven accommodation spaces plus one staff bedroom is considered to outweigh the loss.
“Conditions are proposed to ensure that the development operates strictly as short-term emergency accommodation, with controls over occupancy, duration of stay and management to prevent a drift towards permanent residential or HMO use and to safeguard amenity.
“On balance, subject to the conditions, the development is considered to be acceptable.”
She went on to recommend approving the scheme.
In June last year, Welsh Government planning inspectors rejected an appeal by HIL against a decision by Blaenau Gwent planners to refuse plans to turn the Penndragon back into a pub.
This followed a hearing and a site visit in April 2025.
In November 2023, planning officers had rejected the proposal and judged it to be “contrary” to policies in the county’s Local Development Plan (LDP).
The building had been a pub until its closure in 2014 and had at one stage been the home of Abertillery rugby club.
In 2015, a planning application to change its use to a “mixed-use support facility” was granted permission by the authority.
But the care facility closed in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic.
